Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics

Revolutionary Horizons, by Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson,is a highly readable work that contributes to understandingthe recent events that have placed Bolivia, once erased fromthe map by Queen Victoria following the expulsion of her emissaryin the nineteenth century, in the spotlight of observers ofprogressive movements around the world. With an insightful introductionby Adolfo Gilly, the book provides an accessible analysis ofthe events that led to the inauguration of Evo Morales, thefirst indigenous president in Bolivian history, in January 2006,ending the epoch of Andean apartheid. More than a simple recounting,     

Mobilizing Memory: Bolivia's Enduring Social Movements

In Bolivia, the most indigenous of South American countries, powerful social movements have drawn on collective memory to build effective coalitions across significant differences in ethnic identity and awareness, class consciousness, generations and regions. We contend that this deployment of memory to strengthen protest identities is reinforced by pervasive indigenous cultural practices. Deeply rooted in oral storytelling, perceptions of time, place and a reverence for ancestors, collective memories help bring the past into the present, and create responsibilities to those who came before. The result is a mutually constituting relationship between memory and activism, where an instrumental construction of collective memories serves to provide shared meanings to divergent movements. We suggest that scholars of social movements could deepen their analysis by interrogating rather than normalizing the cultural backdrops that movements operate within.     

What's Wrong with Being Poor? The Problems of Poverty,as Young People Describe them

This article explores how young people living in low‐income neighbourhoods problematise their own lives, using data generated as part of a participatory policy project with five groups of young people, aged 11–21. Three common problems were identified; housing, education and crime, as well as one common silence around their own agency. This silence is perhaps substituted by a focus on collective agency and politics, suggesting that perhaps young people can see poverty as a more collective problem than previous research may highlight.     

Writing in a role for structure: low-income young people's dual understanding of agency,choice and the welfare state

Young people, it is often argued, are more individualised and more free of older, class constraints than ever before. This has led some thinkers to debate the (positive) possibilities of ‘choice biographies’ and self-making among the young, alongside the (more sinister) possibilities of ‘epistemological fallacies’ blinding them to the limits of these self-making capacities. This article interrogates the idea of ‘epistemological fallacies’ for five groups of young people from low-income backgrounds in England. Comparing focus group discussions they had about their lives, with policies they wrote to address the problems of their lives, this article suggests that these young people were less blind to the limits of their own agency than individualisation theorists may predict, and were in fact acutely aware of the difficulties behind finding personal solutions to social problems.     

Conflicting Agendas: The Politics of Development Aid in Drug‐Producing Areas

When international development policy prioritises goals determined by the donor's domestic policy concerns, aid agencies not only fail in their development objectives but can also generate conflict in the recipient country. In the Bolivian Chapare, where the United States is driven by the need to demonstrate success in controlling cocaine production, policies to eradicate coca leaf have led to programmes with limited development impact that increase conflict both locally and nationally. In contrast, the European Union's successful collaboration with local governments which began in 1998 provides insights into generating sustainable development and de‐escalating conflict in drug‐producing regions worldwide.